It is known that couplers in a silver halide color photographic material can react with an oxidation product of an aromatic primary amine color developing agent during color development processing to form an indophenol dye, an indoaniline dye, an azomethine dye, an indaminephenoxazine dye or a like dye, and thereby form a dye image. Color reproduction in such a color formation system is generally achieved by a subtractive color method in which three silver halide emulsions selectively sensitive to blue light, green light, and red light, respectively, are used in combination with complementary yellow, magenta, and cyan couplers, respectively.
Known yellow image-forming couplers include benzoylacetanilide couplers, pivaloylacetanilide couplers, and malondianilide couplers. Examples of the malondianilide yellow couplers are described, e.g., in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,149,886, 4,095,984, and 4,477,563, and British Patent 1,204,680.
However, these conventional yellow couplers are disadvantageous in that the dye image produced has poor stability particularly to heat and humidity or they have insufficient reactivity with an oxidation product of a developing agent and, therefore, need further improvements. Thus, there has been a demand to develop a yellow coupler having excellent image stability and high reactivity with an oxidation product of a developing